Well tomorrow I have an interview with the Professor of Military Science about my Army ROTC application. This is the last part of my application before I find out if I get accepted for a scholarship at the colleges I listed. I'm about to be a senior in high school this coming year and havent given too much consideration about what I want to do with the rest of the my life, but I'm going to have to pick soon.

Now a little about myself, I enjoy camping, fishing, hunting, atving, working on cars, racing cars, shooting, playing lacrosse, and being physically fit. American History really captures my attention as well. The only few things I know I want to do after the military is move out to the country, and own some land of my own. Buy a couple of cool cars, and just enjoy life.

The few careers I've given some actual thought to so far are; mechanic, park ranger, some kind of custom car store owner, gunsmith, and police officer. Besides criminal justice, I do not know what major would help me in any of these jobs I have taken an interest in. In a perfect world I'd like to be a career Army Officer, but I still need to have a real job I could fall back to.

Just a lot to think about....any comments or suggestions are welcome.

 

I just graduated from Penn State with my bachelors in criminal justice and I've always been interested in policing. One piece of advice that most people in the field will give you is that if you want to be a cop, park ranger, fbi agent, or anything along those lines, do not major in criminal justice. The reason being that if for some reason you can't go into that line of work or its just not for you, ya have nothing to fall back on. If history interests you than by all mean major in history, keep in mind you probably won't have to declare your major until half way through your sophmore year. The important thing is to keep your nose clean and keep that GPA up. you can go into law enforcement with any degree.

 

Dude I totally know what you are going through. Picking a major is a PITA! I finally decided to double major in a field of biology & a field in business but I don't know specifics yet. Sounds like you may want to consider a major in biology, wildlife biology, criminal justice, history, business, or psychology & there are a couple others that I can't think of right now lol

 

Just thought of this, considering the military, political science or public policy are good majors to consider if your school offers them. You can get a very broad overview of both of these majors by taking an intro level course that will probably count as a general elective.

 

I would stay away from the mechanic job, unless you have the funds and ability to run your own shop.

You'll basically just be a liquids technician for a while, and have to work your way up with crap money.

I would honestly look in the area for jobs in the majors that interest you, to see if they have good amounts of jobs in that field.

 

Sounds like Criminal Justice, or some of the science majors may be of intrest to you. You may consider talking to a counselor, ask them for examples of jobs people get with certain majors???

 

dont be a mechanic. my dad's a mechanic at the top of the payscale for someone who isint a supervisor, and the pay still is not great. we've never bought a new, or even a used car at a dealership, not out of choice but necisity. money's just not there. if you wanna learn how to tinker with your own stuff as a hobby take a few courses at a local vo-tech school down the road.

park ranger seems like an OK gig around here, except i think it says in the job description you have to be an a$$ hole, lol. idk why, but all the park rangers around here are real a$$wipes. dosent mean its a bad job though. i would take gaurding trees & rocks over getting shot at by drug dealers any day, plus working for the park service pretty much garuntees a home in the country....

 

='( im a mechanic in training, sadness, everone is dissing on it, i love my field but straying into more of electrical part of it. more $$ because there arnt as many people who do electrical on cars

 

I agree with the others on being a mechanic- its not as fun as it may sound. Plus, going to college for a mechanic job is useless; your best bet would be a tech school that specifically trains auto mechanics so you can get some documented experience hands-on.

My Dad was a mechanic for years at a dealership- and he didn't like it. He got into it because he did poorly in school and had no aspirations for college, and his Dad got him in as an apprentice of sorts. He made great money- they got paid per hours of job (mostly just warranty work and front end alignments/work)- so he would always try and get the jobs that actually took much less time than the book listed them at, and would fly threw them- logging 12+ hours in an 8 hour day. Plus, on the side, he was able to go home and work on cars for people outside of work as well- which led into him doing minor home repairs as well (replacing toilets, minor plumbing and electrical, etc) where he made almost as much as he did while at work because the profits were 100% his, instead of having to split the profits with the dealership.

He always said it was hot (in the summer obviously) and hard on your body (banging your hands/arms up and sometimes being in cramped quarters). Not to mention, its dirty, greasy- you get covered in fuel, oil, snow, dirt, etc.

I also had some friends from high school go to auto tech schools, and have really struggled to get into decent careers (and even into full time mechanic jobs). I just don't want you to think its as fun as doing minor repairs to your own car.

That's gonna take some serious capital to get into. I'd say the easiest way would be to start down a known alley, and expand from there (ie open a rim/tire shop; audio shop; tint shop; etc); then expand your shop, staff, and product as you acquire more capital. Tint shop would probably be the cheapest and easiest to get into since you need very few supplies and little training; and the only real capital investment would be a couple grand worth of tint.

That's about what one of my old bosses did- he was into hardcore car audio competitions, and opened a tint shop to help support the hobby. He expanded into car audio with the money he was making from tint, and was able to advertise his shop with his competition vehicles. His car audio (and remote start/alarm) business did well, and eventually grew almost as large as the tint part. From there, he had an open bay in the back with a floor drain- and a car washer from a local car lot began paying him rent to do detailing and car washing out of the back bay (could fit about 10 cars parked outside around back- they added some portable tents to do detailing outside too- and 2 cars inside, one in a wash stall- and one in front of it for drying and waxing).

From there, he turned the upper level/loft area (only about 20x30) into a t-shirt printing area so he could print his own promo t-shirts and do side jobs for other people. Kindof an oddball area to get into, but he got the printing equipment for cheap and only intended to do his own promo shirts at first. Now finally, he made a deal with a shop across town (long time friends) which is a large wheel shop from Chicago which happened to have a wharehouse/store front across town. So he was able to put some wheels on display, and have all the catalogs- and have access to a huge warehouse of wheels in town- so they split the profits on all wheels sold. Most recently, he picked up some other accessories that he sells with split profit from the warehouse as well (bug deflectors, grilles, side steps, etc). Add onto that the occasional used car he brings in and flips to sell out front (he already had a paint area set up, and all the equipment from doing the big fiberglass car audio projects). That's about the closest thing I've seen for a normal person to having a crazy do-all shop like you see on TV.

Granted that took him probably 25 years to do, but it shows you could work into it.

Big thing is that you must be a master at each thing first before you get into it. Its super expensive to hire pro's in each area; its cheaper to do as much as you can yourself- and when you get overwhelmed, hire somebody for cheaper and train them to do it.

Honestly, a lot of them don't require college. I would think with a mechanic, gunsmith, or custom cars- you would be 100x better off going to a tech school that just teaches the trade rather than taking a bunch of unrelated college courses.